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Comedian Jonathan Winters, whose breakneck improvisations inspired Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and many others, has died at age 87.

Longtime family friend Joe Petro III says Winters died Thursday evening at his Montecito, Calif., home of natural causes.

Winters was a master of improvisational comedy, with a grab bag of eccentric personalities and facial expressions. Characters such as the quick-witted old lady Maude Frickert were based on people Winters knew growing up in Ohio.

Winters appeared in nearly 50 films and TV shows, including the classic It's a "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, and was a regular on Saturday morning children's TV shows such as Hot Dog.

He was introduced to millions of new fans in 1981 as the son of Williams' goofball alien in the final season of ABC's Mork and Mindy.

No main stream comics were doing what Winters did in the 60's. He got laughs not from setups and punchlines but from allowing his set of weird characters to simply be "themselves".

He loved creating the "ackward moment". No one was doing that back then. He would have one of his characters say something really weird and then watch the reaction he'd get, then he would go from there.

I thought he was at his best doing sketches on variety shows and the talk shows. He was great with Carson. In fact Carson's "Aunt Blabby" character was a direct cop on "Maude Frikert".

Winters, like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and a scant few others changed American comedy with their presence.

RIP, Elwood, Maude, Lamar, and the rest.

__________________
Duckman: I'll never forget the last thing my father said to me...
Cornfed: "Careful son, I don't think the safety's on"?
Duckman: BEFORE THAT!!!

Always loved the bit he'd do where he was just on a set/stage and they'd roll out a box of stuff. Hats, odds and ends, etc. And winters would just start grabbing items from the box and riffing/imroving with them. Pure genius.

It would be just as easy for the moderator to come along and merge the memorial threads. I think it also makes more sense to let people create a unique thread for each person rather than have a ginormous pinned "mourning" thread.

A central "mourning" thread would also generate some potentially confusing overlap, especially when you have a string of celebrities die in close succession, such as this past week with Roger Ebert, Margaret Thatcher, Annette Funicello, and now Jonathan Winters. These threads fall off quickly enough (the Ebert thread, derailed by political discussions, notwithstanding).

__________________“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States...The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.” - Isaac Asimov

RIP, Jonathan Winters. First thing I ever saw him in was his entertaining performance in Mad, Mad, Mad World. Although I remember him best for appearing in one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, A Game of Pool. I watched it the other day and it still holds up. He was excellent in a dramatic role.